[Vision2020] Idaho's Rape-by-Fraud Statute

[Tom Hansen]

“'I’m going to make an attempt to fix it,' Republican Denton Darrington,
chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Rules Committee, told the AP."

ATTEMPT?!?!?!?

Is Darrington expecting obstacles, in the Idaho legislature, in correcting
this atrocity?

Courtesy of today's (December 4, 2010) Spokesman-Review.

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Legislator to take up rape-by-fraud statute
Loophole led judge to reject recent case
Jessie L. Bonner

Associated Press  BOISE – A quirk in Idaho law that prevented an unmarried
woman from pressing rape charges after she was tricked into having sex
with a man she didn’t know could be changed in the 2011 Legislature.

Idaho law says that a rape charge can be filed if a woman is tricked into
believing the person committing the act is her husband. But the
rape-by-fraud statute doesn’t protect the unwed.

“It’s just a really bizarre statute,” said Terry O’Neill, president of the
National Organization for Women in Washington, D.C. “A woman is raped
whether she has a ring on her finger or not.”

Republican Denton Darrington, chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Rules
Committee, told the Associated Press that he wants to fix the statute so
that it includes both married and unmarried victims.

“I’m going to make an attempt to fix it,” Darrington told the AP. “I have
legislation.”

The law came under scrutiny last month when an Idaho judge dismissed rape
charges against two Boise men in a decision that hinged on the victim’s
status as an unmarried woman.

Police say the woman had been drinking the night of July 21 when she had
sex with her then-boyfriend, Zachary McGraw. Police say the woman was
later tricked by her boyfriend into sex again with another man, Cielo
Sanchez, whom she didn’t know before that night.

The woman ended the encounter when she realized Sanchez was not her
boyfriend. She later called police.

Both men were arrested later that month and indicted by a grand jury in
August.

District Judge Cheri Copsey called what happened “despicable” during a
Nov. 17 hearing, but said Idaho law left her no choice but to dismiss
charges of rape and the aiding and abetting of a rape.

Copsey admonished state lawmakers for not updating the Idaho code.

A change to include all victims, and not just spouses, should be a simple
fix, Darrington said.

“All you do is insert another sentence,” he said. “It’s a fix that could
be doable.”

The change is not expected to affect many cases.

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Welcome to the Idaho legislature. Please set your clocks back sixty years.

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
and the Realist adjusts his sails."

- Unknown